An anti-communist Cuban exile, Luis Posada Carriles, has been released on bail in the US.

Mr Posada, 79, has been in US detention since May 2005, after entering the country illegally. He faces a trial on immigration charges.

A former CIA employee, he is wanted in Venezuela and Cuba over the downing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 in which 73 people died. He denies involvement.

US authorities have ruled out returning him to Cuba or Venezuela.

They call him a security risk and are seeking a third country to take him in.

The federal government had sought to keep Mr Posada, now a Venezuelan national, jailed until his trial on immigration charges, but a New Orleans appeals court rejected the request.

The El Paso federal court ordered his release earlier this month on $350,000 (£180,000) bail and on the basis that he remain in his Miami home and submit to electronic monitoring. Mr Posada's lawyer said he was travelling to Miami, where his wife lives, ahead of his trial on immigration fraud charges.

Mr Posada was also jailed in Panama over a plot to assassinate President Fidel Castro during a visit by the Cuban leader to Panama in 2000, but freed in 2004.